How about "Golem Spider" because it makes a Golem. Golems are endemic to D&D folklore and secular literature as well as Jewish folklore. Golems are made of mud and debris and they are animated by a magician. It seems a fitting metaphor.

Perhaps there's a similar creature in indigenous amazon folklore to the Golem and if so, I submit that as an alternate name too.

I'd like to know how many webs had 8 legged constructs and if that's the sole instance, I'd go with your fungus theory. I figure you scientifically ruled out it was the exoskeleton of a dead spider.

Why do you call it a 'he'? Did you sex it? Do only females of this species create webs?

GOLEM SPIDER GOLEM SPIDER GOLEM SPIDER GOLEM SPIDER GOLEM SPIDER GOLEM SPIDER GOLEM SPIDER GOLEM SPIDER GOLEM SPIDER GOLEM SPIDER GOLEM SPIDER.

Here's a naming suggestion: Google/Image Search each of the proposed spider names come up and see what kinds of associations (other than to what presently seems to be called 'the decoy spider') already exist.

There are similar spiders, in the genus Cyclosa, that use debris to create a line in their web so that when the spider sits atop the line it is almost impossible to detect, as it looks just like a piece of debris. This protects the spider from two of its main predators: birds and parasitic wasps.

This could be a similar situation, but slightly modified (i.e. evolved), so that the web debris is not just a line, but lines radiating out from a central point. Now, those predators that would've preyed upon or parasitized a small spider (such as the one living in this web), are not drawn to the web of such a large-looking spider.

The cars dodging plane crash debris in Russia was the same... but the videosift definition and the normal definition are different. Here footage of a fatal accident is forbidden, except in special circumstances.

I'm surprised this one has lasted as long as it has.

Doing a simple calculation of the area of a disk 10,000 light-years vs. 100,000 light-years (but 50,000 light-years in radius) yields an area of our galaxy about 25 times larger that we can NOT survey for supernova remnants vs. what we can.

That's incorrect. We have radio telescope images of the galactic center which is 26000 light years away. Second, the estimates are based not on what we can't see, but the percentage that we can see and then averaging for the rest.

The next part is that supernova remnants don’t just form out of nothing, they form from the explosions of dying stars. The stars that live and die the fastest still take about 10,000,000 years before they “go nova” and release a cloud of debris that will later become what we observe. That’s pretty much the minimum time a star can “live” during the current epoch of the Universe. Only after that will we see a supernova form.

Actually, O3 type stars can go nova in about 3 million years time, according to that model.

So, add that to our estimate of the age by the number of stars and we have 10,250,000 years, or 10.25 million years for the age of the galaxy. You should note at this point I’ve been saying “age of the galaxy.” That’s because this would only be used to date our galaxy, not the Universe as a whole. So you need to add in the time for galaxy formation … which is still a number that’s hotly debated, but no respected astronomer will say happens instantaneously.

You can't argue that the galaxy is that old because the stars are that old, when that is the thing in dispute. The argument is intending to prove the stars couldn't be that old in the first place, thus proving the galaxy is not that old.

BUT, there’s another complication to this situation which shows why this apparent “method” for dating our galaxy isn’t valid: Supernova remnants fade! They only are visible for a few tens of thousands of years. What does this mean for our estimate of 1,000,000 years for the age of our galaxy? Well, by the time the “oldest” supernova is fading, we starting to observe supernova 200! We should only expect to see in the neighborhood of a few hundred supernova remnants in our vicinity, regardless of how old our galaxy actually is."

According to

http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/supernova/snrfab.html

"Obviously, Davies never went SNR hunting in a galactic environment, but I have. For one thing, an SNR becomes essentially invisible, even in a non-crowded environment, within 1,000,000 year tops, maybe less, depending on the specifics of the supernova and environment. But in practice they become essentially invisible long before."

So, they can be visible up to 1,000,000 years, yet we don't find even one at the maximum range of expansion that we are able to detect (or anywhere near it). We should be seeing the entire range of the spectrum, but the biggest we can find (according to their model), is 20000 years old. So this evidence doesn't hold up and the point remains.

Old hat.

"We cannot observe supernova remnants across our entire galaxy – basically nebulae. Supernova events we can see across the visible universe, but the actual gaseous remnants are much fainter because they are more diffuse. Because of dust and gas in the way, we cannot see all the objects in our own Galaxy. Probably the farthest we can see into the galaxy is maybe to a distance of 10,000 light-years. The galaxy is about 100,000 light-years across. Doing a simple calculation of the area of a disk 10,000 light-years vs. 100,000 light-years (but 50,000 light-years in radius) yields an area of our galaxy about 25 times larger that we can NOT survey for supernova remnants vs. what we can.

So now, we need to multiply our 10,000 years by 25, giving us 250,000 years for the age of the galaxy.

The next part is that supernova remnants don’t just form out of nothing, they form from the explosions of dying stars. The stars that live and die the fastest still take about 10,000,000 years before they “go nova” and release a cloud of debris that will later become what we observe. That’s pretty much the minimum time a star can “live” during the current epoch of the Universe. Only after that will we see a supernova form.

So, add that to our estimate of the age by the number of stars and we have 10,250,000 years, or 10.25 million years for the age of the galaxy. You should note at this point I’ve been saying “age of the galaxy.” That’s because this would only be used to date our galaxy, not the Universe as a whole. So you need to add in the time for galaxy formation … which is still a number that’s hotly debated, but no respected astronomer will say happens instantaneously.

BUT, there’s another complication to this situation which shows why this apparent “method” for dating our galaxy isn’t valid: Supernova remnants fade! They only are visible for a few tens of thousands of years. What does this mean for our estimate of 1,000,000 years for the age of our galaxy? Well, by the time the “oldest” supernova is fading, we starting to observe supernova 200! We should only expect to see in the neighborhood of a few hundred supernova remnants in our vicinity, regardless of how old our galaxy actually is."

Alright, you asked for it, so you got it.

I'm not going to argue against Bill Nye and try to discredit the evidence of radiometric dating. Instead, I will present some compelling evidence for a young Earth/Universe. I'll start off with this one:

1. Supernovas

When stars explode they leave behind SNRs, or 'supernova remnants'. The remnant is a radially expanding cloud of gas and debris, and based on the average expansion speed, we can determine based on that speed how long it would take for an SNR to reach certain expansion diameters.

In 30 years it is predicted the cloud would be about 13 light years across. In 125,000 years it would be 250 light years and in 6 million years it would be 1500 light years across. 6 million years of expansion is about the limit our current instrumentation will allow us to observe; after that it would be too diluted to observe.

Looking around the galaxy, we should be seeing SNRs of many different sizes, from 6 million years of expansion to 5 million to 1 million to a few hundred thousand years, down to recent times of the supernovas we have observed in our recent history. We should be seeing a whole spectrum of sizes, but we don't. In fact, there is no SNR that we have observed which exceeds around 7 thousand years of expansion. Occams razor again demands that we use the simplest explanation, which is that these stars went supernova very recently and are not billions of years old.

Further, we should be observing a certain quantity of SNRs in the galaxy. Based on the average of around 4 per year, in only a billion years we should expect to see around 7200 of them. On the other side, if it has only been 7000 years we should expect to see 125 of them. What we actually observe is around 200 SNRs which is a lot closer to 7000 years than 1 billion.. Occams razor says the simplest explanation is that the galaxy is young.

>> ^RFlagg:

The bridge is too close to the intersection and trucks are supposed to turn off the road at the intersection, so they can't block them from getting to the intersection.

Have you not seen the hanging pipe deals I'm talking about? It's a pipe hanging from rope, cable or chains at the height of some obstacle coming up. From the FAQ at 11foot8.com it says there are warning signs three blocks leading up to this intersection, so over height trucks had plenty of warning by now to turn off and go around. If they hung it right before this intersection, it wouldn't stop the trucks them from getting to the intersection and turning. They would hit the pipe, hear the noise and finally get the message that they aren't going to fit under the bridge. Since the pipe is hanging, the truck can pass under it and it will swing up and drag across the top of the truck. It would do a hell of a lot less (if any) damage to the truck than hitting beam guarding the bridge, and not send fly debris that could injure someone.

Edit: Farther down on the FAQ page it says that a low clearance bar can't be used before the intersection because trucks have to deliver supplies to the street before the bridge. Well then, put that bar after the intersection so a truck driver would hit it first, hear the noise and possibly stop before smacking the guard beam.

Who said I was an adult? That's part of the fucking problem. This isn't about winning or being right.You're fighting an argument I haven't made.>> ^Yogi:

>> ^Trancecoach:
you're so right. I know nothing about being inspired by the mysteries of the universe, or becoming so enthralled that I pursued a masters and a doctorate, not in an effort to get answers, but to ask wiser questions... And I know nothing about the federal government slashing the funding of crucial social programs that have measurable and direct impact on people's lives -- like whether or not they have enough money to eat, or whether or not their child gets the medical attention they need...
And, surely, I've never thought at all about the hundreds of thousands of orbital debris objects from NASA's abandoned or lost equipment or spaceships that are orbiting earth or items as large as 10kg re-entering the atmosphere to fall god-knows-where (to say nothing of all the hardware that was left on the moon).
There's certainly nothing I can say about the ongoing "civil wars" in which our planet is continuously engaged, be it on the basis of race, status, gender, wealth, resources, or just some petty bullshit argument on a website! No, I'm certainly nowhere near smart enough to understand deGrasse-Tyson, or your scintillating brilliance that you demonstrate in your stunning ability to recognize irony versus sarcasm, and knowing just when to let it go.

>> ^Yogi:
>> ^Trancecoach:
ad hominem will get you everywhere... while I play the tiniest violin for you and Dr. deGrasse-Tyson...

Dude you didn't WIN anything here stop trying to take the high road, you're not smart enough to understand what in the hell he's even talking about.


Yeah don't be an adult, just make shit up so you can win an argument. Do us all a favor and stop trying to be a cynical bastard, you're bad at it.

>> ^Trancecoach:

you're so right. I know nothing about being inspired by the mysteries of the universe, or becoming so enthralled that I pursued a masters and a doctorate, not in an effort to get answers, but to ask wiser questions... And I know nothing about the federal government slashing the funding of crucial social programs that have measurable and direct impact on people's lives -- like whether or not they have enough money to eat, or whether or not their child gets the medical attention they need...
And, surely, I've never thought at all about the hundreds of thousands of orbital debris objects from NASA's abandoned or lost equipment or spaceships that are orbiting earth or items as large as 10kg re-entering the atmosphere to fall god-knows-where (to say nothing of all the hardware that was left on the moon).
There's certainly nothing I can say about the ongoing "civil wars" in which our planet is continuously engaged, be it on the basis of race, status, gender, wealth, resources, or just some petty bullshit argument on a website! No, I'm certainly nowhere near smart enough to understand deGrasse-Tyson, or your scintillating brilliance that you demonstrate in your stunning ability to recognize irony versus sarcasm, and knowing just when to let it go.


>> ^Yogi:
>> ^Trancecoach:
ad hominem will get you everywhere... while I play the tiniest violin for you and Dr. deGrasse-Tyson...

Dude you didn't WIN anything here stop trying to take the high road, you're not smart enough to understand what in the hell he's even talking about.



Yeah don't be an adult, just make shit up so you can win an argument. Do us all a favor and stop trying to be a cynical bastard, you're bad at it.

Um, wait until the police chase is over before you run out to grab the debris...

Holy crap that debris it threw in the air just seemed to hang there for a min there had to be a LOT of force behind that. Wow!

I guess it's relative. If you're worried about damaging your bike/car, keep your distance for sure. If you're worried about your life, get as close as you can. If that truck slams on its brakes and you're right next to it, you'll hit the back with a non-lethal force and stick there for as long as the brakes are slammed on.
If I had to choose between this braking scenario on a bike, or some accident while base jumping, I'd choose the bike for sure. Although the chances of a trucker needing to slam on the brakes are probably more remote than having an accident in base jumping.

Of course, as messenger said, I'd be much more worried about debris and potholes...

I used do this all the time. Not at 90kph (my gears don't go high enough), but I've done 70+. Trucks slow down way, way slower than bikes. If you wanna math battle about it, a cyclist's ratio of braking power-to-mass is much higher than any vehicle that's worth drafting. Even if the cyclist bumps the truck (which I have done too at high speed when my brakes failed), it just scares you and slows you down. He'd have to hit with a very high speed difference (not just a high ground speed) for anything bad to happen.

The biggest real risk is debris or pot holes that the cyclist can't see. That's why I've mostly stopped doing this. That truck is a drafter's wet dream though with such a low profile in the back, and I would not be able to pass it up.